Absorbent articles designed to absorb menstrual blood or blood, such as sanitary napkins, can allow menstrual blood, etc. absorbed by the absorbent member from the skin facing surface to pass back and rewet the wearer's skin due to pressure, which causes stickiness.
Methods that can be adapted to eliminate the stickiness problem include using an embossed sheet having a reduced skin contact area or bulky nonwoven fabric as a topsheet defining the skin facing side. However, the performance demands for absorbent articles have been increasing year by year, and such an improvement on the topsheet only would be insufficient to meet the current and growing demands.
JP 2001-348728A (document 1) discloses polyester microfiber useful as a web-forming material. Document 1 states that, because the microfiber is manufactured without using a diantimony trioxide catalyst, a web made of the microfiber requires no washing step for use as a blood separation filter, which is economically beneficial. In document 1 a sanitary product is mentioned as one of a variety of applications of the microfiber web. However, document 1 is silent on applying the microfiber web of the form with the blood-separating ability to a sanitary product.
JP 10-512168A (document 2) describes use of a polymer foamed material capable of absorbing blood or blood-based fluids as an absorbent member of a sanitary napkin. Document 2, however, gives no mention of blood separating ability.